Visa MasterCard to start blocking payments to VPN providers

FRCorey

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/7/4/technology/mastercard-visa-prime-crackdown-anti-geoblocking-vpn-services

Think there's a better view of it on slashdot.org and Torrentfreak as well.

concerto49

Has anyone else received the notice or is this just a specific case against Pyson?

jgould

Cause there's no legitimate use of VPN and privacy and security mean nothing I suppose, especially to online purchases/banking. Brilliant. I have a solution, stop treating the internet as if it is bound by physical land borders.

Holoshed

This actually surprises me since, well, unless it is illegal why take it to such a high level as to block it processor wide?

Now, PayPal banning porn then as such banning UseNet (to an extent) and such well, PayPal is a private smaller processor. Visa and Mastercard making a decision like that without a law requiring it does/would surprise me.

wlanboy

What happens to companies that offer VPN and other services?

wrox

@wlanboy said:
What happens to companies that offer VPN and other services?

"“For iPredator there are always other payment methods, like Bitcoin, but it’s insane to censor a totally legit system that is there to avoid censorship and surveillance,” Sunde says. Despite these alternatives, Sunde is not going to stand idly by. He informs TorrentFreak that Ipredator considering taking legal action, citing the Wikileaks win against the credit card companies as a favorable precedent. Ipredator is far from the only VPN provider that is affected by the policy change. Anonine, Mullvad, VPNTunnel, Privatvpn and several others[..]"

Source: Torrentfreak.com

imperio

Seems like false claim.There are always alternatives like bitcoins..

Update July 4: Visa Europe told us that it “has not been involved in this matter in any way, and has not made any such stipulations to Payson or to any other organisation.” Visa believes that the issue was raised by Payson’s acquiring bank, which acts as an intermediary between payment processors and card associations such as Visa and MasterCard.

We have asked Payson to clarify the discrepancy and will update the article when we hear back from them.

Mastercard has not responded yet.

pcan

Some banks have issues with Visa and internet service providers in general. Last year I had to unlink a Visa credit card from my paypal account: my bank antifraud office began to phone me as soon as I made a VPS payment using the card trough Paypal. At the third purchase they blocked the card entirely. It was a lowendspirit VPS, so the amount was minimal. When i phoned back to get some explanations, they immediately suggested that I should repudiate the payment. After I confirmed (twice) that the payment was legitimate, they explained that the automated warning system was flagging this kind of transactions as high risk, because it may be a validity check attempt of a stolen card number. I can't argue with that; their data is surely backed by statistics.

EarthVPN

There can be issues with high number of chargebacks due to nature of this business however i do not think visa or mastercard will block.In any case there are other payment gateways that accepts visa and mastercand and also bitcoins, webmoney, payza, ukash, cashu etc.